Chaim was a story teller and Zussa a faithful listener. At eighty something, he had plenty to tell. It didn’t matter much to her that she would never know the truth. “Rather a liar than a bore,” he proclaimed when she picked up contradictions. She could never quite get enough.
“I was only sixteen,” he told her, “when I saw my beloved family for the last time.” He had stood on a muddy road outside the family’s dingy wooden shack in the town of Stopnica, Poland, in a house that trapped all the heat in summer but couldn’t keep out the bitter cold in winter. After teary farewell embraces with his mother and father, he climbed onto the droshky that made its way to the nearest port, from where he would sail to South Africa.
“I was a boy when you think about it, at sixteen, no more than a child, sailing to a strange country, quite alone.”
In a small town in the Cape he found employment as the cantor for the Jewish community of some twelve families. It was fortunate that most of them knew almost nothing of Jewish tradition, because he didn’t know much more than they did. His repertoire consisted of a few prayers and songs, which he repeated regardless of the occasion. When he sang “Adon Olam,” the congregation, moved by his sweet tenor voice, swayed into the familiarity of it, grateful to have him there. The melancholy of it convinced them that he was bringing them closer to God, when, actually, what they were...
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